Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business Hardcover – March 4, 2004

This is easy to admit--I cannot improve on Patrick Lencioni's fast-reading, get-the-four-big-ideas-immediately book. So, I'll just quote him in this review.But first...here's a Pop Quiz! Everyone stand up. OK...now remain standing if your job requires you to attend at least one meeting a week. OK...now remain standing if you are in a minimum of five meetings a week (staff meeting, one-on-one meetings, etc.). I know...everyone is still standing. But now...remain standing if you have ever read a book, attended a workshop, viewed a webinar or had coaching on effective meetings management. (Anyone still standing?)My top book pick in my "Meetings Bucket" is this book--but I've never fully reviewed it here. So...listen to Lencioni talk about "Sneaker Time" (pages 251-252):"Most executives I know spend hours sending email, leaving voice mail, and roaming the halls to clarify issues that should have been made clear during a meeting in the first place. But no one accounts for this the way they do when they add up time spent in meetings."I have no doubt that sneaker time is the most subtle, dangerous, and underestimated black hole in corporate America. To understand it, it is helpful to take a quick look at the basic geometry of an executive team within the context of an organization."Consider that an executive team with just seven people has twenty-one combinations of one-to-one relationships that have to be maintained in order to keep people on the same page. That alone is next to impossible for a human being to track."But when you consider the dozens of employees down throughout the organization who report to those seven and who need to be on the same page with one another, the communication challenge increases dramatically, as does the potential for wasting time and energy. And so, when we fail to get clarity and alignment during meetings, we set in motion a colossal wave of human activity as executives and their direct reports scramble to figure out what everyone else is doing and why."Remarkably, because sneaker time is mixed in with everything else we do during the day, we fail to see it as a single category of wasted time. It never ceases to amaze me when I see executives checking their watches at the end of a meeting and lobbying the CEO for it to end so they can `go do some real work.' In so many cases, the `real work' they're referring to is going back to their offices to respond to e-mail and voice mail that they've received only because so many people are confused about what needs to be done."It's as if the executives are saying, 'Can we wrap this up so I can run around and explain to people what I never explained to them after the last meeting?' It is at once shocking and understandable that intelligent people cannot see the correlation between failing to take the time to get clarity, closure, and buy-in during a meeting, and the time required to clean up after themselves as a result."Whoa! That hits close to home! Good stuff. So get the book, read his leadership fable (in the classic Lencioni style) and begin religiously implementing his four kinds of meetings: 1) Daily Check-in, 2) Weekly Tactical, 3) Monthly Strategic and 4) Quarterly Off-site Review.

Have had to sit in one bad, inefficient meeting after another for 40+ years, this book is revolutionary. The solutions are easy, doable and effective. I also really liked the way out was written on story form making it very relatable.

Every person dreads meetings and anything to do with them. However, Patrick Lencioni intuitively creates a make-believe company, Yip, and turns it into a modern day story of a humble leader having to come to grips with the modern cut-throat business world. Lencioni creates a business that is respectful in every aspect, except for their Monday morning staff meetings. Lencioni notes that some of the most crucial decisions are made in staff meetings, so they ultimately need to have structure and leadership, yet allow every person to participate and have a vote. Lencioni points out that weekly meetings with a time limit do not allow enough time or the opportunity to resolve all office and corporate issues. He then proceeds to break meetings into four categories: Daily Check-Ins, Weekly Tactical, Monthly Strategic, and Quarterly Off-Site Review.At the end of the story, Lencioni then applies his thesis to real-world business meetings. He tells how any business can benefit from daily, weekly, monthly, and off-site meetings in reality. Any CEO, manager, business owner, or employee could benefit from reading this book. It puts into perspective how people feel when asked to share their feelings in a meeting, and the book stresses that expressing your opinion is not `attacking' another person's point of view, but may help to realize a problem not foreseen. Overall, I feel like Lencioni's book could definitely help to fix any problems a company is having with meetings, but with the right people to implement and enforce them; which is where I feel the book is lacking. Lencioni tells the steps to make meetings more interesting and successful, but does not give pointers on how really implement this to reality, not all companies will fit the scenario of Yip.Nonetheless, I feel that "Death by Meeting" was an interesting read with overall helpful advice on how to put a little pep into a meeting, and make it productive

While the creativity and storytelling in most business novels is generally an insult to the word `novel,' Patrick Lencioni's work in Death by Meeting provides a very pleasant surprise. It is easy to read and you sense the emotions and issues that real people deal with every day. The heart of this book focuses on turning the dragging, lifeless and even painful experience of "the business meeting" into a dynamic essential element of the nervous system of any company.The first premise of Death by Meeting is the conflict is not to be avoided in meetings but encouraged. Different than personal conflict, idea and position conflict is what is needed to make tough decisions and take the company forward. The second major premise is that we can not have multipurpose meetings. We should have some meetings for information and others for decision making, each with a different style and cadence. Lencioni specifically suggests four types of meetings. The 5-minute Daily Check-in, the 45-90 minute Weekly Tactical, the 2-4 hour Monthly or Ad Hoc Strategy and the 1-2 day Quarterly Off-site Review.Few if any proposed meeting structures come closer to what you would expect to see in a truly lean company. A lean company has (a) tremendous focus on the task at hand, (b) a disdain for waste such as that demonstrated when meetings lack purpose and structure and (c) a respect for the benefit of structure and standardization, such as proposed by the rhythm these meetings have. I highly suggest taking a look at this book, and then a more serious look at your own meeting structure.

Anyone who plans, hosts, or attends meetings should read this book! I bought copies for my bosses.